The Best 30 Books of the Last 30 Years

I helped write 'The Los Angeles Times' coverage for the paper's top picks for best novels and nonfiction books from the last three decades

I always tell my classes that the first midterm is actually sneaky hard. Because it’s just three pages! You can’t do much. You gotta get in, do a thing, and get out. Five pages is actually much easier! You get in, do a couple things—maybe even weave in two stories—and then get us out. Fun. No biggie.

I love it when an editor tells me, “Go long.” But more often I find myself being asked to go short.

The other day my editor at The Los Angeles Times asked me to go very short.

My task was to help write the coverage for the paper’s picks for best books of the last thirty years.

First I had the intense honor of writing up their pick for NUMBER ONE novel of the last thirty years. Here’s my take:

‘2666’

Roberto Bolaño, (2008)

How to capture the horror of a woman’s murder? How to sear into a reader’s brain the profound calamity of a dozen savage killings? What about more than a hundred? Roberto Bolaño aimed for immortality with a staggering five-part opus about cruelty and survival in this swirling, sly, relentless novel set in a Mexican border town. What makes the experience of grinding through all 900-plus pages is the way the author weaves together rumor, history, innuendo, mystery, outrage, heartache and ecstasy. There’s a Chilean professor, a lover named Rosa, the work of an American journalist, 112 brutally murdered women and a mysterious German writer called Archimboldi. Translated by Natasha Wimmer, the bleak and pure “2666” is a sprawling masterpiece. —Nathan Deuel

Just as fun and challenging was my opportunity to write up three of my favorite-ever nonfiction books, each from among the newspaper’s picks for the last three decades’s top thirty nonfiction titles:

‘Just Kids’

Patti Smith, (2010)

We welcome rock memoirs for their liters of vodka, dope on what really happened when the drummer freaked out and maybe what it’s like to share a sandwich with Bob Dylan. But the utterly original Patti Smith — deploying the same savage bravery, stirring creativity and groundbreaking voice that made her iconic album “Horses” so unique — writes one of the best versions yet. Anchored by the poignant tale of her love affair with Robert Mapplethorpe, Smith’s story is an estimably mind-blowing response to the bottomless task of capturing why young and beautiful people do their relentless best in a little place called New York City. —N.D.

And:

‘Barbarian Days: A Surfing Life’

William Finnegan, (2015)

The magic of blasting down a wall of water balanced on a few pounds of Styrofoam doesn’t typically translate to the rectangular page; too many efforts feel pompous, ponderous or preening. Not this. Longtime New Yorker staff writer Finnegan — he of the muscular, award-winning reporting from South America, Africa and Europe — turns his ferocious discipline, steely appraisal and sparkling vocabulary to a lifetime of chasing waves across the world. Come for the generous and refreshing portrayals of smacking the lip but stay for the riveting thrill, for instance, of finding and surfing remote equatorial breaks no one had ever surfed before and few have written about since. —Nathan Deuel

Then, at last, probably my favorite book of the last thirty years:

‘Heavy: An American Memoir’

Kiese Laymon, (2018)

Simply put, no other book in recent memory has so beautifully and meaningfully reported on the agony and ecstasy of living in America with a Black male body. Writer and professor Laymon stacks page after page of devastating portrayals of working in white academia alongside vivid memories of growing up in a Black Mississippi community. He reaches back in time to create a loving and profoundly complex portrait of his mother and the brutal way she tried to express her love, concern and support. But most memorably of all, Laymon shares the true depth of his panicked and aching attempts to feel satisfied, whether it’s at a casino, in front of a full plate or looking at himself in the stark light of another college-town mirror. —N.D.

What are you guys reading these days?

THANKS